Oven Baked Orange Chicken

After much request on my facebook page, I think I've finalized the receipe - I'd love to hear your thoughts after you try it.

Ingredients

4lb Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Flour & seasonings for breading
(I used garlic salt, asian seasoning, curry and pepper)
Eggs for batter

Sauce
1 can orange juice concentrate (the type of orange juice you pick will affect the flavor)
1 Tbs corn starch mixed with 1 cup cold water, to disolve
1 Can pineapple chunks (add the pineapple to the veggies below, the juice to the sauce mis)
3 Tbs Soy Sauce
1 packet onion soup mix

2 peppers
4 carrots
(other veggies as desired)

Cut chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces. Dip in egg wash and then in flour mixture. I put them in our deep fryer for 2-3 minutes to brown them up as I have found that it allows the batter to stick better, but you can pan fry in vegetable oil or Crisco. Fry and allow to cool on plate with paper towel, pat to remove excess oil.

For a healthier (*patooie*) version, you can skip the breading, and just bake with the chicken.

Slice peppers, carrots and other desired vegetables (mushrooms, water chestnuts, celery, etc) and toss with chicken pieces and place in 9x13 pan that is sprayed with non-stick spray.

Mix sauce ingredients in small bowl. Pour over chicken and veggies, cook at 350 for 45 min to an hour, depending on how thick your pieces of chicken are. Serve over rice. 

Enjoy!

Back with a Bang!

Yes, I know I've been noticeably absent lately.  It's been a crazy winter here on the Farmstead and I've been working on redoing my blog/website.  I was going to wait to post the recipes, etc that I have been doing until then - but it's taking longer than I expected. 

As always, you can follow me on Facebook or Twitter to get some mini updates.

I have a few new recipes to post this week, and will get them up.  I'm also working with a friend to start posting some crafting tutorials.  It's going to be a grand time!

Moving forward, I wanted to share a FUN event last week.

For Christmas I coordinated a Holiday Gift exchange at work.  The person I drew is a major Christmas Fan.  His entire cube at work had more decorations than my own home did last year.  I asked him if he collected anything in specific, and he said snowmen.

So, I put together my first Pieced quilt with appliqued designs as a wall hanging for him as a gift.  He loved it!

A week or so later, I was Window Shopping at Hancock Fabrics and noticed they had a "contest" section. They were partnering with Simplicty Patterns for a Holiday Contest.  They had 5 categories, 1 being crafts.  Since I had used one of their patterns as a template for the quilt, I entered the one picture I had of the quilt into the contest on a whim.

Last month, I received a call that I was one of the top 5 finalists in the country for my category.  Talk about being giddy that day.  I went to my co-worker and asked if I could borrow the quilt back to send in for final judging. Last week I got the phone call: I had won second place!

Yes, I'm extremely happy.  And I told my husbad that my prize winnings are MINE and will be invested back into my hobby. ;)

I'm sharing this for two reasons.  One, because I love to share good news in my life.  And two, embrace the things you love, put yourself out there and take risks.  Great things can happen!

Here's a picture of the quilt!